git-chat

A chat app where GitHub is the Backend. Messages are a simple text files in a private repository, sent by committing and pushing, read by pulling and parsing filenames. No servers, no databases, no signups. Just git and GitHub collaborators.

Prerequisites

• GitHub CLI (gh) installed and authenticated
• GitHub token scopes: repo (for everything) and delete_repo (for deleting groups)

Install

git clone https://github.com/1hemmem/git-chat.git
cd git-chat
make install

Builds the binary and installs it to ~/.local/bin. Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your $PATH.

Other useful targets: make help, make clean.

Get started

1. Set up your auth scopes

The repo scope is required for almost everything. Run this once to make sure you have it:

git-chat auth refresh repo delete_repo

This opens your browser. Follow the GitHub prompt to grant the scopes.

2. Create a group

A "group" is just a private GitHub repository created in your account:

git-chat creategroup mygroup

This creates a private repo tagged chat-over-git-repo, clones it locally, writes a README with setup instructions, and pushes an initial commit. The tag is how git-chat discovers your groups later, listgroups, sendmsg, readmsgs, and open all search for repos with this tag.

3. Add people to the group

Add GitHub users as collaborators on the repo:

git-chat addmember mygroup 3abde9a
git-chat addmember mygroup moha

They have to accept the invite in github so they can join the chat.

4. Send messages

Send a message and git-chat writes it as a .txt file, commits, and pushes:

git-chat sendmsg mygroup "Hey everyone, how's it going?"

If you don't have write access to the repo, you'll get a "push denied" error.

5. Read messages

Pull the latest messages and display them in chronological order:

git-chat readmsgs mygroup

Output looks like this:

[2026-06-17 12:00] 3abde9a: Hey everyone, how's it going?
[2026-06-17 12:01] moha: Doing great!

6. Open the live chat TUI

For a real-time-ish chat experience, launch the terminal UI:

git-chat open mygroup

The TUI polls for new messages every half-second, shows them with colored authors, and lets you send messages inline. Press Enter to send, Esc to quit.

7. List all your groups

git-chat listgroups

This searches GitHub for all repos tagged chat-over-git-repo that you have access to (limited to 100 results).

8. Delete a group

git-chat deletegroup mygroup

Requires the delete_repo scope. It will prompt for confirmation before deleting the entire repo.

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All commands

Command	What it does
git-chat auth refresh [scopes]	Refresh GitHub auth with the given scopes
git-chat creategroup <name>	Create a private repo, clone, seed README
git-chat addmember <group> <user>	Add a GitHub user as collaborator
git-chat sendmsg <group> <message>	Send a message to a group
git-chat readmsgs <group>	Read all messages in a group
git-chat open <group>	Open the live-chat TUI
git-chat listgroups	List groups you have access to
git-chat deletegroup <group>	Delete a group (and its repo)